


_off the Record

by gwendee



Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon Compliant, Dysfunctional Relationships, Fist Fights, Future Fic, Gen, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, light fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:15:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29822031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendee/pseuds/gwendee
Summary: 5 times Karma and Asano made out, and one time they figured it out (and made it out alive).A companion piece to (On) Par. It would help to read that fic first, but there's no need to read that before this.
Relationships: Akabane Karma/Asano Gakushuu, Asano Gakuhou & Asano Gakushuu
Comments: 16
Kudos: 110





	_off the Record

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [(On) Par](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28242015) by [gwendee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendee/pseuds/gwendee). 



> If you've read (On) Par, you might have an idea of where this is going... or not. 
> 
> Trigger warnings: on par is a fic of Gakushuu's attempted suicide, and this is a sort of prequel fic building up to it (and a short +1 snippet of after). There are also snippets/flashbacks/implication of suicide ideation on Karma and Gakuhou's parts. Karma and Gakushuu have a pretty unstable developing relationship.
> 
> I personally don't think it's as dark as the TWs make it seem but... I'm a pretty bad judge of angst content since I read/write so much of it haha

They fight, a lot.

**0**

It had started on the second day of the first year of high school. They were arguing about something - about what? The specifics weren't important. Who threw the first punch also wasn't explicitly important (it was Karma, who was still working on his anger management issues and he knew that the moment his fist swung towards Asano's stupid face, was the moment he took several steps back on his self-scribed "self-improvement" goals.)

Asano dodged, because he had a quick eye and quicker reflexes and experience dodging things. He stared at Karma, too shocked to look angry, and said "what the fuck?"

"I…" Karma had looked down at his hands. "...didn't mean to do that?" He actually hadn't. It was an unfortunate impulse on too much adrenaline (and that past year was too fueled on adrenaline that he jumped at shadows that moved too quickly and pulled out his knife in the dead of the night and learnt that the few seconds of difference in throwing the first punch might mean life or death or broken bones,) and he felt so strung up and stressed and-

He was actually glad it was Asano he was talking to now, because he would probably never have forgiven himself if he had hit one of his innocent undeserving classmates. (Not that he was saying Asano was uninnocent and deserving, and Karma still wanted to punch him on the daily but  _ not really _ , you know, and he was very very glad that Asano dodged.)

Karma stared at Asano for a beat.

Asano stared back, and his gaze flicked down to Karma's hands and back up to Karma's face.

"Hey, listen," Karma says. "I'm… I really didn't mean to do that."

Asano continues staring, a mix of incredulous and shock and apprehension, and he's already taken a step back when he dodged from Karma but he takes another-

"Let's fight," Karma says quickly.

Asano shoots him a sharp, surprised look. "What?"

"Let's fight," Karma says. "In the gym. Equal playing field."

Asano gapes. "What?!"

Karma bounces on the balls of his feet. "I'll let you get a free hit in."

Does Karma feel bad for almost striking Asano exactly where his father hit him just a few months ago? Maybe. 

Does Karma want to relieve some stress and fight a match against someone he knows can keep up with him? Yes. 

Does Karma actually know how to peacefully resolve conflicts? Well, his track record proves that tensions can be diffused if two people just got a chance to let off some steam and beat the tar out of each other in a class-wide paintball game, or something along those lines, and it’s worked out pretty well for him thus far.

Asano… contemplates. "Fine. Not here."

(They beat the tar out of each other in an outdoor basketball court, and make arrangements to do the same thing next week.)

**1**

The court is empty this time of the day. 

It's the one tucked in between the old 3-E classroom and the main campus of Kunugigaoka, off a road that's cordoned off by a smattering of trees and a lone signpost. Karma's not seen it before, not even after tearing apart the 3-E hill the year before, but the boundary lines drawn did not map far enough that it was under government restriction at the time.

Karma asked Asano how he knew this place, and Asano paused for a beat before he lied. 

He said his father built this school and he was there, of course he knew,- that wasn't the lie. The lie is that Asano had something else he didn't say, but it's not Karma's job to psychoanalyze him or whatever. 

It's not the best for sparring, with overgrown weeds and cracked concrete and the burrows and nests of several wild animals that Karma and Asano, for all their destructive tendencies towards each other, try not to disturb. Asano's generously dragged out several old gym mats ("they were going to go to the trash anyways," he muttered) to cushion the floor the first time he lands wrong and has to explain to the class how he's sprained an ankle. Limping into class after the very public event of getting thrown into the wall by his legal guardian last year had three different staff members pull him aside, and Karma felt a little bad for him. 

"Show me that move you did yesterday," Asano demands, and Karma takes two sweeping steps forward before he tosses Asano overhead and slams him into the ground. 

The thing about sparring with Asano, is that despite popular assumption - with the both of them such proficient fighters trained in many martial arts you might expect the sort of television-worthy performance art,-,

but the thing about sparring with Asano is that it is so shamefully graceless that Karma from three months ago would have scoffed in embarrassment to be caught here.

It's nothing like fighting with Nagisa, in the context of a class setting with - at the very least - some base level of civility to be had, with their teacher supervisors and other classmates and the fact that Karma objectively knows that Nagisa is dangerous but subjectively sees him as an adorable little baby that he can't possibly hurt,

but there's something humiliating about always being at the edge of losing, someone else of such equivalent strength and equally unafraid to fight dirty - a stalemate, an embarrassing one at that, that seems more reminiscent of two toddlers tearing at each other's hair in a mudpit,

but Karma would lie if he said there wasn't something invigorating about it all, with the lack of pretenses or pressure. There's no audience, no expectations, no fake smiles or laughs (mostly on Asano's part), no cameras (Karma is so sick of cameras) and no report card and no need to say a word.

(They hardly so talk, what is there to say? But so many words pass between them anyways.)

The position Karma has Asano wrenched in draws a pained grimace from the boy, and Asano is not against kicking below the belt so Karma makes sure he has his legs secured, but then Asano headbutts him.

Karma drops the both of them - partially in shock and partially in pain. Gakushuu falls on - thankfully - the gym mat, blinking deliriously. Karma's hands don't come up in time to brace himself and it's a scene from a sit-com, really, the type of stupid coincidence that was supposed to happen only on television, one of which Karma can now say is a lot more painful and a lot less hazy-filter-flower-petals-drifting in real life.

Karma lands smack on top of Gakushuu and their faces smash together very painfully. 

The clack of teeth is the loudest, but the second headbutt hurts a lot more, and Asano pushes Karma off to rub at his nose and mouth. 

Asano stares at Karma, looking a little hurt. "Ow."

"I…" Karma winces, a hand flying up to his lips. "I think you tore my lip."

**2**

Karma and Asano fall into a cruel sort of stalemate - giving, pushing, regretting.

For every busted lip and bruised shoulder that Asano gives him, Karma gives him bits and shreds of the memory of the class on top of the hill. Asano's fingers wrap around the hilt of a dagger too steadily to have never held one.

Karma teaches Asano how to hold a gun.

Ever asked the person sitting next to you in a public place to help watch your stuff? Asked your fellow gym-goer to spot you at the weights? How easily does unwitting trust pass between strangers’ hands,

Asano’s fingers warm against his throat, 

Karma’s known him for four years now. 

When they were thirteen, all odd angles and scratchy voices, not quite yet having outgrown the roundness of his cheeks, Karma still standing on tip-toes to reach the top shelf of a cupboard. The first day of tryouts, martial arts, and Asano flips Karma over on the training mats.

Karma laughs at it now, in hindsight, he wasn’t weak but he had been  _ surprised _ , for the most part, that the little blonde kid who looked like he saw too much of the inside of a library than yellowed grass, unlike Karma who had been all rumpled-shirt and bandaged-knuckles and had seen the better part of dingy street alleys and cat-fights round the bend of school fences. 

In four years Asano has grown up,  _ grown up _ , into even more of an asshole.

For four years Karma watches Asano grow into a ferocious leader not unlike the then-Principal, and Karma knows - despite his penchant for trouble-causing - that the social hierarchy of such a dictatorship was not nearly as malleable enough for Karma to push those boundaries. He skirts around the lines, though, and for all of a watchful eye that Asano keeps over his carefully curated deck of cards (only a fool would have sooner believed that Asano never knew about Isogai’s part time job until it was “conveniently” useful for his agenda), he lets Karma keep line.

But it was that sort of unspoken thread of trust spun between them, even back then,- a symbiotic relationship. For every push there was a pull, for every carrot a horse follows, and for every leader there was a carefully crafted rebellion. Just as how performative activism keeps people content enough in their social justice bubble to fluctuate at status quo (take a mile, give an inch, and they’ll see progress), Karma is enough of a representativeness of a “rebellious side” to keep most students’ interest on him, but intrigued enough that they see no need to act out themselves. 

Karma follows Asano through the roles - and they’ve been at it since. Dancing in and out of reach of each other to keep the balance. 

The castle walls fall, the pyramid flips, and they meet on equal ground.

Asano’s arms tremble,- Karma nudges him, a little, (“move”,) and Asano falls on top of him in a heap. 

They’re sweaty, sticky, muddy - pretty disgusting, actually. Karma grunts, at the breath pushed out of him. 

“Ngh,” Asano complains, and rolls over to drop at Karma’s side. 

Karma laughs at him. “Can’t feel your arms?”

Asano glares at him.

It’s through half-lidded eyelids and glistening lashes that Karma sees the violet of his eyes, his pupils wide in the shade of the trees. He follows the bridge of his nose - freckles, how adorable, - down to his lip, where there’s a faint swell of his bottom lip from where Karma had grazed him with a hit. 

adrenaline's sapped out of his limbs and he feels exhausted, like he's just run a few miles. 

Asano closes his eyes.

Karma lifts his head, but a muscle twinges on his back and up his neck. "Ow."

Asano cracks open an eye, and laughs at him. 

"Shut up," Karma says, but his arm is trapped under when Asano rolled over onto it, 

Asano continues lazily blinking up at him, looking oddly content in their position - legs tangled up, breath mixing together, Karma feels their hearts beat, beat, beat in tandem, rabbit-quick from their exercise-

Karma’s abruptly reminded of their first not-kiss, which - it hadn’t really crossed his mind since then, and it could hardly be called a kiss now, could it? Karma would have more likely broken his nose than actually kissed-

he brings a hand up and swipes at a bit of blood on Asano's bottom lip.

Asano’s eyes flutter open, and his gaze traces the movement of Karma’s hand to his face, 

Karma starts, although he’s not sure what to say, “I-”

Asano surges forward and kisses him - really, this time, swallowing Karma’s surprised gasp. One of Asano’s hands come up to cradle his jaw (there’s a bruise there) and another hand shifts to run through his hair,-

It’s not an unpleasant sensation, someone stroking the back of his head where he didn’t notice there was a mild pain until it started going down, something soft-

The curve of Asano’s back feels smooth under Karma’s hands, his fingers rest at the dip on his hip, Asano shifts against him,-

Karma doesn’t realize he’s closed his eyes until he opens them. 

Asano sits up, and presses a hand to his mouth, looking surprised at himself.

**3**

There's a lot of things less romantic than a brawl on the street, but you'd be hard pressed to find a relationship any less intimate than two compatible sparring partners.

Dodge, parry, hit, block - perhaps too intimate of a relationship means too predictable of a standardized fight, the kind of choreography you'd see in the movies that's all flair and no winning. Karma's not aiming to  _ kill _ , obviously not, but he's not aiming to lose in the most boring way.

Dirty fighting means a lot of long touches and skin contact. Asano pressed to the ground with Karma's hands gripping his wrist means that he's a warm body writhing underneath him, glaring at Karma with his face flushed red from exertion, sweat trailing down his face and neck past the collar of his t-shirt (currently riding up his torso the more he moves.)

This type of relationship - physical contact, heavy breaths, pressed to each other -, put them on a bed and how different would it be, rolling in between the sheets? They're two layers of clothing away and a privacy sheet away from-

The thought makes Karma involuntarily tighten his grip, Asano hisses.

"A-akabane," Asano gasps, lips parted prettily,-

It’s a poetic sort of yearning, Karma finds out, over autumn leaves in late day when he sees the bruise peek out from Asano’s scarf,

the kind you’d find in sonnets, of summer days and winter nights,-

It’s on Karma’s mind, he can’t stop thinking about it.

“Why’d you kiss me, the other time?”

Asano falters in his step, and his head snaps up in Karma’s direction, having the audacity to look offended. “What?”

“It was-” Karma pauses. “Well, why?”

“Wh- you’re the one who initiated it!”

“No I didn’t!”

“You,” Asano says, looking almost angry, and he brings up his thumb to press to his bottom lip.

Ah, well, he had a point there, there wasn’t quite any other explanation to Karma’s own impulse - a reasonable interpretation of Karma’s actions, really. 

Asano is glaring at him.

“You’re the one,” Karma says. “Who reciprocated.”

Asano’s eyes flick to the ground - he’s scuffing his shoes against the concrete - then back up to Karma. “You’re speaking like you didn’t want me to.”

“I was,” Karma starts, hesitates. “I didn’t… not want to.”

“It was, the moment,” Asano says.

“Yeah,” Karma says.

The moment - a moment? What was it they showed in movies, slow music and long camera pans,

ballads and choirs and twinkling music lights, 

when your heart is beating so fast you can’t hear yourself think, when you’re so physically close to someone you can smell their shampoo (mixed with blood mixed with sweat), feel the heat of their breath at yours, light glittering off the bright of their eyes-

(fighting, versus f-)

-The moment, is a lot like the rush of endorphins after a run, when you’re just that little bit of high and all you can think about is wanting that breath of fresh air and that gulp of water, 

And even though that cute boy makes your chest grow tight and your throat even drier, -

Karma drops down on him and catches his mouth with his own. He releases one of Asano's hands, so Asano can scratch and claw and tear Karma's face off since Karma is sucking his breath away.

All Asano does is to grab a fistfull of Karma's hair and pull him down so Karma lets go of Asano's other hand to tug at the stupid silver of skin between Asano's shirt hem and waistband that his eye keeps flicking to.

Asano melts under him, making such pretty noises-

what is  _ dirty _ fighting?-

(Karma’s losing his breath.)

Karma wrenches him away and feels a special fluttering delight when Asano makes a surprised, displeased mewl.

"Yield," Karma says, a helpless grin spreading on his face.

"You-" Asano says, pissed off. "Fine." And tugs Karma back down.

**4**

“Maybe I just wanted to kiss you,” Asano says, abruptly. “Is that so hard to believe?”

Karma smiles at him. He might have mustered something a little more fitting for his reputation, but he's with Asano and there's not quite enough of an incentive to try to be, not when Asano's managed to punch him hard enough in the sternum last week that Karma started crying in reflex and couldn't stop sobbing for ten minutes, when Karma kneed him hard in the gut and he spent the next fifteen minutes rubbing circles on Asano's back as he dry-heaved onto the grass. 

Karma's a teenage boy, and what teenage boy doesn't start grinning when someone admits they want to kiss them? 

Asano kicks him in the shin.

Sakakibara tails Karma one day, corners him at the vending machines no one goes to because a terrified second-year had spread a rumor that it was haunted. (It was Koro-Sensei, darting by too fast to be discerned but not fast enough to be discreet.) 

"I know you and Asano are up to something," Sakakibara says accusingly.

Karma, partway amused, just raises an eyebrow. "Up to what?"

"You two disappear after school some days," Sakakibara says, and he's counting off something with his finger. "Each time he comes back with a new injury, or you do!"

How cute it was, Asano with his own guard dog; and Karma appreciates Asano a little bit more, keeping mum about their arrangement. Not that Karma told anyone anything as well, who would he have to tell? 

He doubts his new classmates - the transfer students from a different high school, the Kunugigaoka Junior High students who bumped up - would appreciate hearing of their new hobby, not when Asano's pretty face ushers them through lessons and flits around in the halls-

ah, but that pretty face, Karma's the only one who knows how it tastes, right?

Through the reflection of the pane of the vending machine he sees Sakakibara's aghast face and then he sees his own, a smile too soft and too unstandardized for Sakakibara's delicate sensibilities and feral perception of him. Karma schools into a more neutral-characteristic expression, but never let it be said that Asano does not choose his close confidants well (or rather you couldn't make it very close to him in the first place without your mark of usefulness) and Sakakibara, ever-empathic, narrows his eyes at the display of emotion that Karma wasn't even sure he himself had.

"It's private!" Karma protests, at the absolutely scathing glare Sakakibara shoots him (truly befitting of Asano's second-hand man). 

"I don't have to explain," Karma says, "anything to you!" But he lifts his shirt anyways, and Sakakibara immediately makes a face but his eyes zero in on what Karma expected Sakakibara to see - the faintest of marks of fingers on his hip. 

He watches Sakakibara jump to conclusions - objectively wrong, and Karma feels a confrontation ahead - but subjectively right, or right in the way that Karma wanted him to think ("I hope this taught you a lesson in asking personal questions! Your best friend left his handprints all over me.")

"-payback," Asano says, but Karma doesn't hear anything but the rushing in his ears, the pounding of his heart, the scratching of his breath.

He sees glittering violet eyes at him, feels a weight pressed against his chest, the ache of his muscles as his arm is pulled away from his body in a painful twist, the strain in the stretch of his thigh-

“A-ah,” Karma gasps, before he can stop himself.

Asano pauses, eyes darting quickly to various parts of Karma’s body (Karma feels so scrutinized, so  _ vulnerable _ , trussed and splayed out for Asano to see)-

Asano grinds down on the space between Karma’s legs and oh, oh!-

Asano looks pleased at himself, and he does it again.

“Quit it!” Karma scolds.

Mortification burns at him, but he can’t bring himself to be fully embarrassed - not really, because he feels like - in their fights - there’s nothing they’ve not done (not like that!) but

There’s no place on his body Asano hasn’t touched, by accident or otherwise,- not the first time they’ve been in this position, Asano above him, one of Karma’s legs hooked around his arm, his other knee pressed to the side of Asano’s rib,-

Asano laughs, tension loosening his shoulders, loosening his grip on Karma. He dips his head as his shoulder’s shake in amusement, “it’s fine, Akabane, this sort of biological reaction can’t really be controlled by-”

Karma wants him to shut up about it. “Shut up about it,” he says, the almost-forgotten, familiar flush of embarrassment trailing up the more Asano talks about it,  _ shut up- _

Another laugh, light and airy like christmas lights. Asano is far too familiar with his body to be embarrassed along with Karma,- he knows that when he digs his nails in Karma’s hips it makes Karma squirm, he knows the spot between his ribs that sends Karma into a giggling frenzy, that one line to draw along the back of his neck that would make Karma yield before they’ve begun a match. 

He doesn’t know who kisses who first, does it matter? Again, rolling on the gym mat, they’ve made out before, and now Karma’s a little braver, a little turned on, and he latches his teeth onto the soft part of Asano’s throat.

-Surely they've passed the point of fighting by so much more, now,

"You told Ren we're in a sexual relationship," Asano scolds him later, and ah, is that what he was miffed about? 

But… "We aren't?

Asano opens his mouth, snaps it shut. Smacks Karma.

Karma tells him, "sorry, I don't think your shirt's going to cover that hickey."

"Oh, you motherfucker,"

**5**

Asano looks up at the sky, as he's twisting a cord of rope around the neck of what was once a basketball hoop, tugs a little too hard on it's frayed edges.

Words spill,- 

Karma pulls him past the old cobblestones of a path that no one has walked in months, twisting between the trees still covered in old paint ball spots, and to the place where Karma has lived and laughed and cried,-

Yet it's Asano whose knees almost buckle when he comes within view of the old 3-E classroom, (Karma pulls him to his feet and feels him tremble,) 

Asano makes a noise not unlike when Karma has him in a headlock,

Karma follows him out back and watches as Gakushuu pulls apart some overgrown bushes to reveal his name, carefully scratched into the wood in shaky kanji.

"Who's Rikuto Ikeda?" Karma asks.

The names are worn into the wood, worn from sun and rain and weather, and then vines twist over them until you couldn't tell what it said unless you were looking for it.

Asano doesn’t say anything, he’s on his knees, head pressed to the wood, eyes closed. 

They ran togeth er, once, away, following a jogging trail that Asano memorizes. They dip into a park further back on the outskirts of the neighbourhood and take the long winding route around the river.

They come across a bridge. 

Karma tugs him along to the precipice of a cliff. He stands at the edge of it, feeling the wind pull through his hair, dragging him back,

he remembers falling from it, feet leaving the ground.

Isn't it funny, no matter how fast you think you're falling than someone else, gravity works the same way for you and for everyone else 

you plummet the same way as an apple

and you accelerate at 9.8 meters a second,

even if it feels like miles, 9.8 meters is a 5 second sprint and a 5 seconds fall,

even if Karma falls and thinks of 15 years.

, Asano pulls him back. 

They fall, in a heap, tangled together on the grass.

Asano tells him the story of the boy, the teacher, and the abandoned basketball courtyard.

"It's a grave," Asano says, and at the face Karma must have made he tacks on, "symbolically."

"Of course Ikeda wasn't for my father alone to bury. He had his own family, you know? He had friends and family who all missed him."

"I only had one."

And the thing is, Karma knows,  _ he knows _ ,

of the way grief seeps into bones, etches away at stone,

it wasn't for him to say how others mourn, nor pass judgement on the way pain clouds over thought.

Asano the younger would be the first person to speak about his father's depression, whether the man admitted it or not.

"He wanted to leave me behind, so many times," Asano says, "he almost did, so many times. I think he came closest, with," he stares at the old 3-E classroom, and presses his palm to his cheek. 

"He thought I would be better off without him. I think he saw me there, then, splitting off to a path other than the one he tried to dictate for me, when he hit me I saw- in his eyes- I know,-

he thought, i didn't need him anymore.

"

"I just…" Karma says, looking past the horizon above the cliff, 

tasting sweat and tears and harsh mountain air,

whistling wind in his ears.

"I thought, I didn't have anything else going for me. I've always wanted to. Know. What it felt like."

"If I died, I could…" Make a statement? 

(You're five years old. You see your first superhero movie, and then your next. They punch a bad guy in the face, the bad guy goes to jail. They raise an arm and zip through the air, a beaming smile on their face. When you turn off the television and look out the window, birds chirp and flit from tree to tree, branch to branch.

You get your first broken bone trying to reach a branch too high-up.)

"I'm not (strong) enough to get him to stay," Asano sobs. "I don't even know if I'm enough for myself."

(You're enough for me), Karma tries to say, holding him there, pressing pleas to his lips, but he's not sure if Asano believes him.

**_ _**

Drifting off to sleep, lights dimmed and streetlamps fuzzy through the window tint, quiet of a neighbourhood at 3 in the morning.

Asano with his head on Sakakibara’s lap as Sakakibara strokes through his hair like he’s a cat, Karma seated across them, a pillow to his chest, tuning in and out of the slow sound of Asano’s breathing.

“hey,” Sakakibara says, before Karma’s eyes close.

“Hm?”

“I didn’t understand a lot of things,” Sakakibara says. “When I first… we were in the same elementary school. I didn’t understand a lot of…” he looks to the door, 

“he told me one time about going home and finding his father in blood. We didn’t understand what it meant at the time, and we didn’t talk about it again once we both knew.

it was scary, hearing about it, I can’t imagine how he felt. 

I think he always blames himself for somehow not being good enough. That’s why he tries so hard, because he thinks that if he thinks he becomes a version of who his father wanted, then his father would finally decide to stay.“

“That’s not what happened at all, was it?” Karma says. 

“Gakuhou…” Sakakibara purses his lips, as he continues patting Gakushuu’s hair (the boy shifts in his sleep. He’s exhausted, he has to wake up soon.) 

“he doesn’t know what he wants,” Gakushuu had said, knees drawn up to his chest, watching the twine of rope from the basketball hoop swing, sway, swing with the faintest of breezes. “not anymore.”

“It was never Gakushuu’s responsibility to help Gakuhou figure that out,” Sakakibara says sharply. “He was a kid. He was  _ his _ kid. If anything, Gakuhou was the one who had a responsibility to him.”

A small part of Karma didn’t expect to live all the way until he was sixteen. Here he was, sharing lazy kisses with Asano as they cuddled on his couch, after having had an informal gathering with some of his middle school classmates in Isogai’s current workplace of residence, 

The walk home illuminated with dots in the far distance and warm lights draped over window sills, 

Asano nursing a bruise Karma gave him three days ago and smacking him with a spatula when Karma tried pinching a bit of meat from the still-cooling clay pot that Asano had set to simmer for the past few hours.

He remembers being booted down to 3-E, the red mark on the letter he shredded almost immediately, walking past then-Asano in the halls and having the  _ look _ seared into his memory (that same, faux disappointment, the saccharinely sweet tone his mother would wear as she tapped her nails against his scalp,  _ we expected you to do better, sweetie. _ ) 

A strange dichotomy to draw with the boy currently in Karma’s arms.

“Thank you for pulling him back from the bridge,” Sakakibara says, and his voice carries a little too choked up, his eyes red. “I wasn’t… I couldn’t have been-”

“It was so scary,” Karma says, and when he says that he finally feels something -

something, 

Seep from his body, loosen from his fingertips;

maybe it’s something he’s carried ever since he threw that first punch towards Asano in the empty school hallway a whole year ago (the brief flicker of fear in Asano’s eyes, 

(all the times they’ve fought, all the times Karma has had his hands on Asano’s body, all the times he’d absently traced faint silvers of scars that zig-zag up Asano’s thigh (he knows the press of a razor when he sees one, Karma, aged thirteen and a half in the bathroom after his parents skip town again for the seventh birthday in a row, just after telling Nagisa in no uncertain terms to never talk to him again)

All the times Asano trembles under his hand and leans in too much to his touch every single time they fight and how Karma starts to realize he does the same, too)

“Fight me,” Karma said, back in the school hallway.    
Don’t fight yourself, is what he doesn’t say.

(In the right light, with the right photo filter, he and Asano look almost alike. Karma’s not self-unaware, call him a narcissist, 

Maybe he also tells Asano the things he needs to tell himself.)

“I’m glad you’re here for him,” Sakakibara tells him.

“I’m glad you’re here, too,” Karma tells Sakakibara, as a show of goodwill and faith, and also because he means it. Sakakibara - Asano’s personal guard dog - is good for him, Karma thinks. Asano would do good to have Sakakibara in his corner.

Sakakibara rolls his eyes, a little good-naturedly.

**+1**

“My therapist says we shouldn’t keep trying to punch each other’s faces in.”

Something flutters in Karma’s chest - a twinkle of a fairy light (butterflies,) Asano - Gakushuu! Lies back with his head pillowed in the crook of Karma’s neck.

“Yeah?” Karma says, his hand coming up to Gakushuu’s shoulder, where his thumb lazily rubs circles around it.

“She didn’t say we have to stop sparring,” Gakushuu clarifies. “Just in more moderate and safe settings like a real gym, not in the graveyard of my older brother.” He looks up at Karma, eyes squinting in mirth. 

“She says we should spar less, too. Expand our horizons and experiences for our dates.”

Because those were dates, weren’t they? In some odd fashion. 

Karma kisses the crown of Gakushuu’s head. “Let’s go see a movie.”

He could really stand to meet Asano senior under better circumstances, 

In all scenarios, really, Karma has something to say.

But the man is no longer the imposing principal on the other length of a long hallway, nor somebody with a grenade and a hammer and a crazed glint in his eye, nor the grieving father desperately wringing his hands together in the hospital waiting room. He’s just…

Well, in any case, Karma could have stood to put on anything but ratted pyjamas if he’s going to be opening the door to his boyfriend’s father at 8 in the morning. Maybe he would have put a shirt on, too, if he got any notice.

If anything, Gakuhou just looked woefully unimpressed.

“Oh, hi,” Gakushuu says, popping up behind him.

“You couldn’t have given me any warning he was picking you up?” Karma hisses at him.

Gakushuu shrugs at him, a smile tugging at his lips. At least he’s dressed. “Maybe I wanted to see you shirtless a little while longer. I like your abs.”

Karma splutters. 

Gakushuu waves to him as he takes his father's side.

The both of them aren't smiling, but the look in Gakuhou's eyes are decidedly softer today. and Karma watches as he raises a slow hand to rest on Gakushuu's shoulder - Gakushuu, who leans into it, gives Karma a content little squint.  “See you tomorrow."

**Author's Note:**

> If you read this far: thank you! I'm glad you made it. 
> 
> This fic is written in the same choppy, stilted formatting that (On) Par was written in and I'm not sure how everyone felt about it?  
> It's not the easiest to understand, and you will see a lot of punctuation/grammatical/formatting errors and oddities but they're... intentional, to say the least, or rather I made grammar my bitch and now I'm using it for deliberate disruptive story pacing. I feel like I made a slightly more coherent post about it once.


End file.
